Pro-life doesn’t necessarily mean “Christian.” In fact, valuing the lives of the unborn these days doesn’t really even need to be predicated upon a more general belief in God or some other more mysterious source of power.

Just consider the testimony of 29-year-old Kelsey Hazzard, a self-described atheist who leans liberal on issues like climate change and gay marriage, but who holds to a firmly pro-life worldview and wants to “make abortion unthinkable.”

Hazzard, who Faithwire first encountered during this year’s March for Life, published an op-ed in America magazine this month, in which she covered her standing as a an atheist pro-lifer. Here’s a snippet of what she had to say:

The abortion industry would have you believe that people like me do not exist. They would have you believe that the pro-life movement is almost exclusively old white men, with a few pearl-clutching church ladies thrown in. This characterization is insulting to both young and old. The older pro-life leaders of today are the pioneering young adult activists of the 1970s, who courageously dissented from Roe v. Wade. And they have recruited new generations of pro-lifers to follow in their footsteps; millennials in the movement call ourselves the “pro-life generation.”

Despite Millennials such as herself shunning faith more than past generations, while also embracing more liberal views on issues like gay marriage, she said that “this more secular generation still shows up to save preborn children and their mothers from the tragedy of abortion.” Explaining that dynamic, she said that many Millennials simply see abortion as a “human rights issue.”

And Hazzard said that comprehending and relying upon that argument is essential, especially if pro-lifers really want to bring pro-choice Millennials to their side of the abortion debate.

“Many young pro-choicers have been exposed to years of ad hominem propaganda. They have been taught that pro-lifers are hypocrites who do not care about children after they are born.” she wrote. “They have been taught that we hate women. They may be close to someone who has had an abortion — or even had an abortion themselves — and believe that becoming pro-life will require them to issue fire-and-brimstone condemnations of post-abortive women.”

Hazzard recommended that pro-life people befriend pro-choicers and show them what, exactly, they believe about the importance of life. Read her piece in its entirety here.

Faithwire also interviewed Hazzard earlier this year at The March for Life in Washington, D.C., and she explained why she has made “a committment for nonvioelence against those who are incapable of defending themselves.”

“The abortion lobby has painted a really effective caricature of the typical pro-lifer as a conservative, white, Catholic male or maybe a nun, but definitely not anyone who looks or acts like us. We’ve had to work really hard to beat that down.”